RAMONES - ROCKET TO RUSSIA @ 45

 

Released on November 4th, 1977, the Ramones third LP, Rocket to Russia, is celebrating its 45th anniversary today. The album continued the band’s quest for a commercial breakthrough, but despite improved production values, evolved songwriting skills and consistent critical praise, the album failed to generate significant sales and kept the group rutted in the “punk” gutter. Even though they were at the height of their powers and were knocking out songs which should have been taking the charts by storm, the "dog had a bad name" and the band squarely blamed the Sex Pistols for creating a hostile environment within the AM radio industry for anything often lazily labeled “punk”. Radio programmers tarred anyone associated with the genre with the same brush and simply weren’t willing to give the band the chance they so desperately deserved.

The album would be the last to feature original drummer Tommy (Erdelyi) on the skins, though he would return as producer for the next LP, Road To Ruin. His clashes with Johnny were enough that he felt that it was for the good of the band’s moral for him to focus on the production side. The label put up somewhere near $30K for the album and most of that was spent on production while recording was done as quickly as possible to minimize the cost of studio time. The production credits list Tony Bongiovi and Tommy Ramone as head producers, but in reality, the majority of the work landed in the lap of engineer Ed Stasium. Bongiovi, who is the cousin of Jon Bon Jovi, had a reputation for being difficult to work with and Johnny often insisted on only recording when he wasn’t in the studio. Johnny was also the main driver in pushing the production emphasis, going so far as to bring in a copy of the Sex Pistols single, God Save the Queen, at the start of production and stating that they’d ripped off the Ramones and their next album MUST exceed the production values of the Pistols.

Musically, the band went in a more surf & bubblegum pop direction, albeit with their patented buzz-saw edge. Thematically the lyrics focused on humour, often referencing mental disorders and psychiatry. The band were broadening their palette of styles as well, so it wasn’t all rapid-fire tempos all the time for this outing. Critics were enthusiastic for the variety and evolution in the band’s sound. The legacy of the album, like so much of the band’s output, particularly with the first half dozen LPs, is that they left behind an incalculably infectious canon of work which has succeeded in infiltrating popular culture over the ensuing decades, becoming touchstones for a generation and beyond. It’s only sad that they could never reach those heights while they were around to enjoy the success. As the Stranglers said, “everybody loves you when you’re dead”.

RAMONES - LEAVE HOME @ 45

 

January 10th marks the 45th anniversary of the release of the sophomore Ramones LP, Leave Home, which was issued on this day in 1977.

After the somewhat hurried and low budget production standards for their eponymous debut LP the previous year, Sire Records decided to loosen the purse strings and invest in some next level production for the boys for their follow up album. The result was a major step forward in sound quality, an improvement that was matched by advancements in songwriting which were underway at the same time. In fact, the band decided to record the songs in the same order they’d written them in order to showcase their progression. Most of the songs were written by the individual members at their homes. Johnny, lacking an amp, recorded his guitar demos directly to a cassette deck to bring into the studio to play for the guys. Production duties were shared by drummer Tommy & hired gun, Tony Bongiovi, who’d previously worked with disco queen, Gloria Gaynor as well as on some posthumous Jimi Hendrix releases. The sound quality they achieve certainly put them head & shoulders above their “punk” peers, and the accelerated tempos left the others even further in the dust. The group also sought to broaden their musical palettes slightly with a few more pop oriented songs.

One of the best songs from the album had to be scrapped for some years due to legal concerns over copyright infringement. Carbona Not Glue was originally included on the album as a follow up to Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue from the first album, but concern over possible legal trouble because Carbona was a registered trade mark meant that subsequent pressings of the LP replaced the song in the US with Sheena Is a Punk Rocker and, in the UK, Babysitter was used. The song eventually returned to the album on reissues years later, though it was unofficially released as a single in 1991.

Once the album was released, all the investment and effort paid off with the critical response, but the album failed to generate the kind of buzz in sales they'd hoped. The Ramones were always cursed in some weird way with being masters of crafting these catchy, iconic anthems that only their hardcore fan base listened to, at least until most of the band were in their graves. It was a constant source of frustration that the band could put out songs like Gimme Gimme Shock Treatment & I Remember You, songs that screamed for radio airplay, and then have the masses simply ignore it all. Yet here we are today and people think these songs were always ubiquitous hit singles when nothing could be further from the truth.

Albums like Leave Home remain essential to the legacy of the Ramones, however. You can’t put it on without feeling yourself vibrate with energy as the songs rip out of the speakers. But it will always be a shame that this music wasn’t embraced right out of the gate so that the band could have enjoyed the success they were so desperate to achieve.

RAMONES @ 45

 

On April 23, 1976, the debut LP of the Ramones was released, 45 years ago today. While, at the time of its release, it would seem to have little impact, at least in the pop charts, the undercurrent the band had unleashed would turn out to be one of the most impactful in rock music history.

The album was recorded in a mere 7 days with a puny budget of less than $6,500.00. Even the cover, which would become one of the most iconic images the band ever produced, cost only $125. But these meager investments proved to be more than worthwhile as this album became the stone dropped into the ocean who's ripples would send wave after wave of influence throughout the music world for decades to come.

The formula of the Ramones was deceptively simple on every facet, from sound to image. And yes, it was completely contrived, but didn't come across as forced or artificial. It felt all too legitimate and as real as an invading army. On stage, they were all ripped jeans, black leather jackets and bowl-cut hair. It was a remarkably effective visual and gave them a sense of unity and purpose. That focus was even more evident in the music, built out of blocky three-chord riffs played at breakneck speed, propelled by machine gun rapid drumming. As hard-edged as it sounded, sharp as a buzz-saw blade, every song rested on a melodic framework which was as optimized and efficient as anything the classically trained Kraftwerk could muster. And the hooks were inescapable, topped off by Joey's minimalist lyrics, often requiring no more than a handful of lines to communicate their theme as clearly as a perfectly cut diamond. They captured the zeitgeist of the bored teenager with precision and nuance in a subtly brutalist manner.

The Ramones were my gateway into what was called "punk" at that time. I was a little late to the party, not picking up my first album by them until Road To Ruin in 1978. I remember crossing that threshold so distinctly. I'd been collecting rock magazines like CREEM for a couple of years and kept seeing articles on these new bands like the Ramones all the time. At first, I was suspicious about this stuff, but then The Cars came out and nudged me into the "new wave" lane, and I became curious enough to want to take the next step into something harder edged.

I recall being so bored and disappointed with the mainstream rock music of the day. I'd buy an album and only like one or two songs on it and the rest was just "blech" - tedious blues based boogie-woogie rehash cliche crap. I was desperate for something fresh and vital and NEW! So I decided that the Ramones were going to be my first experiment in this direction and I was not disappointed. I remember pulling out the inner sleeve of the LP, which had a lyric sheet on it and I was baffled by how short all the songs were. Maybe only one 4 line stanza for some songs and that was IT! Putting the record on my parent's behemoth console stereo, the speakers burst with these frantic guitar riffs, speed-demon drumming and Joey's nasal yet inescapably melodic whine. He was like some kind of giant insect, like someone had crossed Gilligan/Bob Denver with a praying mantis. Alien but enchanting.

Four and a half decades later and this music still holds its own and has become soaked into western popular culture. Some of their songs are even used for sports chants, a sure sign that you've become a social icon. Sadly, all four of the faces on this first album have now slipped their mortal bonds and moved off of this material plain, yet their contribution will resonate on for generations and this album will continue to stand as ground zero for that explosion.

INFLUENTIAL ALBUM - DNA, A TASTE OF DNA

Clocking in at barely 9 minutes across six songs, DNA's 1981 EP/mini LP, A Taste of DNA, fascinated me as one of the shortest albums in my collection.  I had thought the Ramones were concise, but DNA took the idea of abbreviated to a whole other level.  Across the 12" surface of the EP, you could literally count the grooves on the record as they were so far apart. 

DNA was fronted by guitarist/vocalist Arto Lindsay (who also appeared on the first Golden Palominos LP), and they were at the forefront of the more avant-garde end of the spectrum of the New York "No Wave" scene.  The biggest influence here was discovering that having a guitar in tune was entirely optional and the necessity of articulating actual words was also up for debate.  Against the loping, stumbling bursts of Ikue Mori's drums and Tim Wright's bass, Lindsay snarled out guitar string stretching knots while blathering vocals like a psychotic in the middle of a breakdown.  It was pure expressionism as music, splattered across the recording tape like a Pollock painting.

INFLUENTIAL ALBUM - DEVO, Q: ARE WE NOT MEN? A: WE ARE DEVO!

I was spending the night with my brother and cousin at my great grandma's house the weekend DEVO appeared on SNL in 1978 and performed Satisfaction and Jocko Homo.  I had just started to dip my toe into the waters of "punk" and "new wave" music with the likes of The Ramones, Elvis Costello and The Clash, but DEVO took my brain into a whole other realm of strangeness. 

Like The Ramones, DEVO offered up a pretty bullet proof concept.  They had every angle covered and every nut and bolt was rock solid tight.  I didn't know anything about the band's history or inspirations back then.  All I knew was this group was coming out of the gate with their shit tight as fuck and, as odd and goofy as they were, you also got the sense that they meant business. 

After seeing the SNL performances, it became an immediate mission for me to get out to the record shop and snap up a copy of their debut album.  Once I did and got it home, what spun out of those grooves was a continuation of the flawless execution I'd seen on TV.  Every track was spot-on with it's composition and lyrics.  This was stuff you wanted to quote from the get-go.  It was so compelling that I took to putting DEVO graffiti all over the high school boys washroom.  I also was dumb enough to wear a home made DEVO badge, so the janitor called me out on it, but cut me some slack, saying he didn't think anyone would be dumb enough to put up all that graffiti and then walk around with a badge like that.  Needless to say, I felt guilty and ceased my felt tipped assaults on the facilities.

POP DOES PUNK - IGGY'S FOUR STEPS TO CREDIBILITY

The following reviews were originally posted on my Facebook timeline, but I figure they're a significant enough bit of writing to warrant a more permanent placement here on this blog. As I've been editing and reading through these, I've done a bit of work to fill things out and fix up some things that may have been fine for social media, but don't really cut it for this context.

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I recently watched the new Iggy Pop produced 4 part docu-series, PUNK. Watching it brought me back through a lot of the music of my youth, which inspired me to write down a few thoughts.

The first episode starts things off by covering the genre's American roots in Detroit with bands like The MC5 and The Stooges before moving over to the east coast to The New York Dolls. These bands set the stage in the late '60s & early '70s by breaking away from the fuzzy freakishness of the hippie era and delving into something much more dark and primal. Among the three of them, you have the Stooges bringing the rawness and simplicity that would be the foundation of the sound, the MC5 laying down some political awareness and the Dolls bringing in a warped sense of fashion and outrage. Pretty much the perfect building blocks of what was to come.

From there, we move into the CBGB's scene with artists like Ramones, Blondie, Wayne/Jane County and Richard Hell. There's a few references to The Dead Boys and Dictators as well, but, disappointingly, no mention of Suicide, Talking Heads or Patti Smith. This, unfortunately, leaves a few noticeable holes in the narrative, but what they do cover is dealt with well enough. The interviews are generally very informative and give a solid sense of the evolution of the scene.

This first part culminates with the failed attempt to revitalize The New York Dolls by Malcolm McLaren and ends with him hightailing it back to London to try to put a band together utilizing the scruffy boys hanging about in front of his clothes shop. Obviously, they're building the bridge to the second episode by showing the migration of influence from New York to London. I suspect the producers are trying to show a chain of causality from one scene to another and, indeed, there is some lingering controversy in terms of who influenced who and who originated "punk". And though it can be said that NY/US scenes came first, there's something else I got from all of this laying of groundwork.

You can see how the scene in NY was so much a case of a lot of fuel piling up, but no spark to ignite it all. All this stuff was going nowhere by the mid 70s and this is stated as much in the first episode. It was only known by a small group of local hipsters and had no national presence. If it had ended there, if there had been nothing happening in London, I suspect we would never have heard of bands like Ramones or many of their contemporaries and people like Pop and the Dolls would have been no more than mere footnotes in the history of rock & roll. There just wasn't any "buzz" to drive a national, let alone global, awakening towards this music. It's not until the Sex Pistols come along and capture the attention of the global mass media that the match is put to the woodpile and the flames really go up.

This brings us to the second episode, which puts the focus pretty heavily on the Sex Pistols, as expected. However before that, there is a wonderful bit that deals with the role of women in punk and that was a real treat. The Slits were the main focus, which featured interviews with founding members Palmolive and Viv Albertine, who both offered unique insights into their involvement and evolution within the scene.

As an aside, I must add that it's surprising how many people didn't get interviewed for this, but I suppose you get who you can in this sort of production. The Damned and the Clash also feature significantly with Dave Vanian offering some perceptive contributions, but only having Terry Chimes representing The Clash was a bit disappointing. He was never a particularly significant member and didn't frankly care much about the politics or the deeper themes the band were known for. Either Paul Simonon or Mick Jones would have had a much better understanding of the band and their impact.

However, as I said, this second installment was very much the Sex Pistols show and with good reason. It's hard to comprehend how weird it was for a band like the Pistols to create such a media frenzy. Not that we aren't saturated with sensationalism now, but to have it driven by a bunch of guys with guitars is nothing short of surreal. Nobody really cares about musicians these days. Sure, you've got people like Kanye driving tabloid sales, but it's all no more than a trash fashion fixation and not that sense that the world has been seized by the "anti-Christ", which was a very real perception of Johnny Rotten in some circles. The fact that this little band could spend a week in America at the beginning of 1978 and upend the music industry in the process is rather inexplicable and unprecedented. That crazy little tour made "punk" a household word. John Lydon does most of the talking for this particular piece of the punk puzzle and, while he can come off as rather arrogant in some instances, more often than not, the points he's making are quite valid, if you take the time to look at things objectively. And while this second episode didn't have quite the narrative cohesion of the first, it did eventually work its way into the death throws that were the Pistols breakup and Sid's self destruction, which wrapped it up with a tidy, though bloody, bow.

Episode three shifts the focus back across the Atlantic and to the US scenes again, starting in NY, moving to DC and finally LA, with a welcome aside to good ol' VANCOUVER! I was very happy to see DOA feature so prominently and deservedly for their pioneering work establishing touring resources and routes for many other bands to put to use in those days. We also have representation from groups like Bad Brains, Black Flag, Dead Kennedys and a few others. However, this is the part of the story where my interest drops away pretty steeply as the emphasis on violent male aggression becomes the primary calling card of the day and leads far too quickly into the whole "skinhead" and white supremacy cultures.

This is the slippery slope you slide down when you are perceived as an excuse to kick heads instead of kicking ass. It is clear to me that people like Henry Rollins and Jello Biafra are true intellectuals who are capable of understanding and insight and I love hearing their perspectives, but I can't help but express some kind of frustration and disparagement for the way that what they did paved the way for Doc Martin wearing racist thugs to give voice to their hatred. I don't want to put this all at their feet, but some of it has to land there given the types of crowds they attracted.

But I also can't point the finger only at the punks for allowing this faction into the fold. The Industrial and Neo Folk scenes are just as guilty of inviting this sort of rubbish along for the ride as anyone else. Shock tactics, violence and extremism offer ways to jolt people out of their complacency, but they're a double edged sword and people are often too seduced by their sadistic impulses into treating these things as sensational ends in themselves rather than a means to alerting people of the dangers of herd conformity and ignorance.

It becomes destruction for its own sake, but the true spirit that started this movement was about breaking down walls and restrictions in order to move forward. This is why the majority of the originators of the sound moved on to more experimental and investigative approaches after the initial rush of nihilism had blasted a path clear into something new. But those who chose to stay in the rubble and keep smashing at the fragments only managed to dig themselves into a hole of brutish self destruction. You can't simply be content with that one act of rebellion. You have to be able, and willing, to build once you've knocked something down.

The fourth and final episode brings things home by starting in the early 90s with the shift from "hardcore" to "grunge" and then examines its infiltration into the mainstream music industry and finally wraps up with the decimation of the industry caused by the internet and pirating. Again, we have a much welcome section at the start which looks at the significant role of women as the grunge scene counteracted against their seeming exclusion by the often misogynistic hardcore culture. These forays into the feminine contribution, while welcome, also serve to highlight how desperately we need a documentary series that focuses on the ladies and their contributions to alternative music. I'll put it out there to the universe that someone like Patti Smith needs to do a take on this.

The overarching theme to this finale, however, comes down to that fine line between art and commerce, for as much as "punk" wants to be rebellious, it also wants to succeed. If the Ramones had been able to crack the marketplace the way Green Day did, they would have been thrilled for it. They ALWAYS fancied their songs as hit singles. You can't tell me they wouldn't have been on cloud 9 if they'd had a hit like Dookie. The fact that their songs eventually became iconic, finding eternal life as sports anthems and the like, only means they were right about the accessibility of what they were doing. Their timing was simply off.

Success can also be a curse, however. Fame is often poison for the soul. Popularity creates a kind of insulation around a person where they're suddenly surrounded by parasitic "yes men". Once that happens, reality warps into some distorted fantasy supported by people who will never tell you the truth or say "no" to whatever you ask for. As is pointed out, when "cool" things become popular, they lose their "coolness". It's a challenging balancing act to be progressive without being trendy. It's the difference between those who are true seekers on the edge of experience vs those who merely seek validation for the act of being ahead of the curve when they really have no understanding of why that has any value in the first place. Are you cutting a new path or just sweeping up the discards of those who have trodden one that's already well worn?

Beyond this, there is this essence of wanting to break free. I've seen it repeat itself the past 50 years, over and over again. Whenever there's an awakening to the realities of oppression and restraint and a desire to break free, this spirit crops up again.  Taqwacore: The Birth of Punk Islam, is a wonderful documentary that gives an excellent example of this process happening in the Arab/Islamic world and shows how intrinsic it is to human nature.  I think, as long as there's someone trying to keep a lid on the human spirit, there's gonna be some kids somewhere who are going to pick up a guitar or a synth or a microphone and say "fuck your bullshit". It'll take new forms, but that desire to smash through the walls will always find some expression somehow.

All together, I think this series does a pretty commendable job of showing the origins, evolution, history and future potential of what has become (sometimes regretfully) labeled as "Punk" rock.  It gives us a clear insight into an elemental aspect of human nature unique to the 20th and 21st centuries.  It's something which is a response to our industrialized, technological civilization which, on the one hand, seeks to advance humanity while, simultaneously and conversely,  trying to stifle it and force it to conform to a kind of artificial homo-geniality which is contrary to its basic nature and therefore inspires rebellion and protest.